Content warning: mentions of sexual violence, drug use and suicide
The popularisation of looksmaxxing has opened a gaping glory hole in the manosphere – ironically by some of the most homophobic people on the internet.
Looksmaxxing, a portmanteau of ‘looks’ and ‘maximising’, is the idea and practice of improving one’s physical appearance through a variety of methods, which we will be discussing.
Terminology
The term is believed to have etymologically originated in online incel forums in the early 2010s. Initially, looksmaxxing was primarily focused around the idea of mens’ perceived genetic advantages being directly correlated with romantic success, with factors like height and muscularity being discussed on internet message boards. The practice has since evolved into less of a discussion surrounding supposed biological superiority and more of a ‘self-improvement’ ideology – but not always in the ways most would suspect.
The term circulated predominantly only within the incel subculture until approximately the early 2020’s, where it began to spread beyond it’s ‘manosphere’ roots and entered mainstream internet culture, particularly onto the feeds of (generally insecure) young men. Terms like ‘hunter eyes’, ‘subhuman’ and the ‘PSL scale’ began to infiltrate the online lexicon. Since it’s propagation, looksmaxxing has developed into two very polarised streams of the same idea: ‘softmaxxing’ and ‘hardmaxxing’.
Softmaxxing is a term that speaks for itself – non-invasive, relatively benign methods of improving one’s physical appearance, ranging from practising hygienic habits such as basic grooming and skincare (which women have been doing for centuries without discussing on a podcast) to implementing physical exercise into one’s routine, improving body composition and achieving a more toned or muscular build.
Hardmaxxing, on the other hand, focuses on more aggressive, sometimes dangerous behaviours believed to enhance and even permanently alter one’s looks, placing appearance above all – including but not limited to cosmetic surgery, ‘starvemaxxing’, ‘roidmaxxing’ and, perhaps the most concerning procedure, the viscerally coined ‘bone smashing’.
These terms don’t attempt ambiguity in their adequately-named titles.
Starvemaxxing disturbingly includes ardently depriving oneself of food in order to attain a gaunt, specific facial and bodily appearance, reducing body fat and promoting a skeletal frame, causing bone structure to become more visible particularly in the face – think more pronounced cheekbones, for example. As if good old 90’s heroin chic needs a comeback.
Roidmaxxing encourages the abuse of anabolic steroids to enhance muscle growth – which can lead to a multitude of life-threatening health issues, including but not limited to cardiovascular problems, hormonal and reproductive system disruption, and damage to the liver and kidneys. To put it plainly, your heart might give out before you have the chance to reach middle age, and your balls will shrink. Attractive!
Starvemaxxing and roidmaxxing are already perturbing enough on their own. But as with any good internet trend, people continue to reach troublesomely high levels of dedication.
Let’s take a look at everyone’s favourite conventionally attractive lolcow Clavicular. He has promoted and praised the use of meth to a young audience countless times, justifying it using claims of easy weight loss. There are hundreds of clips out there of him ODing on stream, half-consciously stumbling through social gatherings whilst his team hurriedly follow him with filming equipment. And he is well aware that there are young people watching this! Is meth use really what we want to be encouraging amongst teenagers?
Whilst there are only a handful of officially documented cases (though it is possible to find YouTube tutorials and people tracking their bone smashing progress online), the practise and encouragement of bone smashing has made it’s rounds amongst looksmaxxers online. Bone smashing is the act of using a hammer, rock, or another hard object to quite literally smash one’s face – such as the jaw, or even the bone around the eye socket - in order to chisel and reshape facial bone structure using blunt force. And even though it (thankfully) has become more of an inside joke within the looksmaxxing community online, the promotion of such a practise to young, impressionable, insecure men is dangerous within itself. Not to mention that looksmaxxing influencers like Clavicular bone smash on readily-available streams to an audience of thousands.
Cosmetic surgery is also a common topic of conversation amongst the community, and a more frequently executed one. Think less along the lines of Lady Gaga-esque injectable fillers (this is not shade!!!! Love her), and more along the lines of jaw and chin augmentations, rhinoplasties, facial implants, and, shockingly, even limb-lengthening procedures. These just some examples of how far people will go to ‘improve’ physical appearance.
The Implications of Looksmaxxing on Men and Women
A growing demographic of young men are algorithmically predisposed to the ‘manosphere’ subculture – which was created as an opposing force to feminism, pushing misogynistic ideals and radicalising suggestible teenagers.
Similar to the way that most appearance-related social media trends target women, looksmaxxing has had serious negative repercussions on vulnerable young men, of which the movement primarily preys upon.
Placing your physical appearance above all and relying on the validation of the internet for your sense of self-worth is bad enough, but not only are people in looksmaxxing communities doing exactly this, but the people they turn to for testimony have a negative view of not only themselves and others, but women and other groups of marginalised people (the aforementioned forums often carry homophobic and racist sentiment within them), fuelling bigoted mindsets, bio-essentialism and encouraging detrimental red-pill ideologies.
Whilst at a glance some elements of looksmaxxing encourage healthy habits essential to both mental and physical health overall (which could not be further from the main issue), at it’s core, looksmaxxing has ties to misogyny, suicide and violence. Many impressionable young men are only one click away from falling down a dark, extremist rabbit hole littered with gendered hate speech and harmful incel ideology – on average, posts about rape are published on one particular forum every 29 minutes(!!!!).
While looksmaxxing has developed an ironic backbone on social media as any good old internet trend does, the pendulum still swings. While many don’t take looksmaxxing seriously, there are groups of others on the opposite side who internalise and follow incel associated dogma just as seriously.
There are plenty of young men online calculating their ‘sexual market value’ based on factors like facial harmony, dimorphism (the measurement of how different you look as a man to a woman – guys, androgyny is awesome), angularity and other miscellaneous facial features. But whether it’s ironically or unironically, this behaviour still buries itself and associated ideas into the subconscious of those who associate with it. Also, let’s not give any credit to the idea of a ‘sexual market’, for obvious reasons.
And as if such an act (and the porn-brained name for the term) wasn’t harmful enough, if deemed below average (or sub5 if you’re familiar with the laughable PSL scale), said young men are harassed, accused of being feminine, weak, and dubbed ‘subhuman’. There are an alarming amount of teenagers online being told to take their own lives because of something as trivial and insignificant as appearance.
Now, let’s take a look into the insults being thrown at these forum users – in particular, the terms ‘feminine’ and ‘subhuman’. To infer that perceived feminine traits are not only inherently weak and undesirable – but also lower than a human being – further pushes detrimental misogynistic rhetoric that not only affects women, but also men.
Men have been relentlessly shamed for centuries for not only expressing and exploring femininity, but have also been constitutionally and societally indoctrinated into forbidding themselves to possess traits deemed feminine in an internal sense without even realising it.
What a miserable way to live! And the majority of us don’t even realise this is what’s happening! Many of us have unfortunately been socially conditioned to associate the concept and expression of femininity with weakness, subservience, and fragility. Not only is this rhetoric harmful, misogynistic and homophobic in itself, but it also strips those not wanting to associate themselves with femininity (often cishet men) of a fulfilling, expressive life, placing social boundaries between them and those embracing femininity. Not only does this take away the opportunity to have a broad range of interpersonal relationships, but it can also fuel aggression toward those living or identifying in a way that they might think they understand, but don’t - and refuse to even try to.
This not only perpetuates the cycle of self hatred and subsequent projection that can lead to violent acts (think about how many homicides are linked to incel culture, and how many women are killed in crimes of passion), but also fuels beliefs that are bigoted in every sense of the word.
Think of the cycle as something like this: ‘Undesirable’ men follow other men’s misogynistic advice about what women supposedly do desire, women don’t respond as expected (who would want to date someone constantly obsessing over their appearance or unironically labelling themselves a giga chad??), and thus the obsession with unhealthy methods of self improvement continues, fuelled by the previous rejections. Fin.
Not only are these sexist, lonely men packing women into a neat, convenient little box in terms of what we look for in a partner (as well as assuming that every women is actively looking for one), but they are also reducing women to trophies of sorts, a reward for self-mutilation disguised as improvement, the ultimate goal. But surprise – women are humans! We don’t want someone who goes around criticising or praising the physical appearance of themselves and others, and I think I can speak for most of us when I say that we don’t want someone who thinks abusing anabolic steroids or taking a hammer to the face is the pinnacle of self improvement.
On a more anecdotal note that you, reader, might even relate to, these self proclaimed chads and looksmaxxing enthusiasts online and (if you’re unlucky enough to encounter one in the wild) in real life are actually unbearable to be around. Good luck trying to have a genuine conversation with someone who actually thinks that the shape of your face is the quintessential meaning of life. I’ve interacted with these kinds of people both online and in real life, and let me tell you, I had to sit with my fingers to my temples burnt-out mother style afterwards.
Phew! That was a lot. I feel like I should clarify: while it may seem like I’m bashing men or masculinity in general, I’m not. I don’t think masculinity is an inherently bad thing in the slightest – nor do I think men don’t deserve a platform or safe spaces to discuss insecurities and exchange advice. I actually believe completely the opposite – that because men in the modern age are actively and subconsciously discouraged to discuss these kinds of things and be vulnerable entirely, there should be spaces where they feel like they can open up and help each other incorporate healthy habits into their lives, sharing things that have helped them and provide insight into why they might be feeling such a way (and let’s be honest, sharing shower routines wouldn’t do anyone any harm). I just don’t think this is the way to do it. Nothing good ever comes out of comparing yourselves to others or practising dangerous behaviours like self-inflicted starvation. It’s so easy to fall down dark spirals of insecurity and obsession when you don’t feel good about yourself, and it’s an awful way to live your life. Basing your ego on the standards that these lonely, self-obsessed people edict is a self-fulfilling prophecy – or curse, rather. You will never be perfect enough in their eyes, so what is the point of trying to impress these people?
I think it’s incredibly unfair to not just men as whole, but especially young men, who don’t know any better, may not have a steady support system, and might not be able to comprehend that sometimes, conventional attractiveness is literally just winning the genetic lottery – and based on ever-changing, unrealistic societal beauty standards.
The patriarchy, capitalism, the system – whatever you want to call it – benefits no one besides the people at the very top of the pyramid. The billionaires and oligarchs of the world sit comfortably on their baby cashmere thrones while the rest of us not only struggle to live under such an oppressive and unfair system, but all the while we tear at each other’s throats for such trivial, meaningless things. Looksmaxxing, the masculinity vs femininity debate, incel culture, these are all things that keep us distracted from the real issues of the world. The fight against inequity, poverty, war – these things actually matter!!!
So please, let’s stop worrying so much about our jawlines, or our PSL rating, or our sexual market value. We’re humans! The imperfections and experiences of our humanity shape what it means to live as one. Nobody need a scale developed by spiteful teenage boys on the internet to measure their appearance and sense of self worth. Reality is far less prickly and judgemental than any social media platform or website, and real people are flawed. That’s just the way life goes.
